Rating: 
Summary: Old myths with a new spin are still old myths
Review: Yaacov Lozowick's analysis of the 1948 war as an attempt to destroy Israel is contradicted by telling us King `Abdallah of Jordan was 'not seeking a major fight' with Israel and only wanted to occupy the Arab state. Perhaps he should have let on that Syria and Egypt intended to thwart Jordan's expansionism, not Israel's creation. He even hints at this by saying Egyptian troops went towards Tel Aviv (though it's more likely they were going to Jaffa, an enclave assigned to the Arab state, as Simha Flapan wrote) and Hebron, also included in the Palestinian state. And as Joshua Landis says in 'War for Palestine', Syria's government was afraid Jordan would go for them after taking Arab Palestine (As for the 1967 war, Yithzak Rabin, Menachem Begin, and Mattiyahu Peled did not believe it was self-defense, the latter even advocating a Palestinian state throughout the 1970's. It is telling that Lozowick glosses over 1967, providing no details other than Egyptian media bragging over Israel's imminent destruction, which he doesn't give an example of.).
He blames the Palestinians for rejecting partition, yet slips in that Israel would have been 40% Arab if it went off without a hitch. Even with the influx of Jewish refugees, Israel could easily be a bi-national state today within the 1947 borders (The 100k Arabs within Israel after 1948 are now over 1M - compare this with the approx. 400k Arabs within Israel '47). In other words, the 1948 war supposedly started by the Arabs is what made Israel a Jewish state, not the partition. Too interesting that Israel refused to take back any Palestinian refugees or give back the land it captured.
No one following the situation before 1948 would believe the Palestinians would have accepted partition. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin's predecessor in the Revisionists and Irgun, said as much when he wrote the Iron Wall in 1923: "If it were possible (and I doubt this) to discuss Palestine with the Arabs of Baghdad and Mecca as if it were some kind of small, immaterial borderland, then Palestine would still remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existence." Even though there's no way of knowing how it would turn out, people should know there were different tendencies in the Zionist movement, some favoring a bi-national state and against partition, and the conflict that began in the 1800's, reached its apex in 1948, and is still going on today may not have been inevitable. Despite Lozowick's portrayal of the Palestinians as resorting to violence at every turn, the vast majority of them did not fight in 1947-48 and many even tried to reach an accommodation. Simha Flapan has written about this as well in 'Birth of Israel'. Palestinians have written of non-violent resistance to the Zionist movement (appeals to the Ottoman government for example) that didn't lead anywhere.Lozowick's use of the old argument that many Palestinians, such as Izz al-Dine al-Qassam were recent immigrants to Palestine is laughable considering Palestine had a Jewish population of 10,000 as late as the 1800's, making most Israelis new immigrants themselves. Instead of arguing who was there first or who has a greater claim to the land, it should be put simply that people living there were driven out mainly through force, occasionally by fear, always through direct actions of the Haganah (Lydda and Ramla as Yitzhak Rabin admitted in a document leaked by Peretz Kidron), and the Irgun and Stern Gang (Deir Yassin), and Israel will have to take responsibility for this at some point.
It's galling that he can write off every atrocity such as Deir Yassin, Qibya, and Sabra and Shatila as being condemned by Israeli society, yet Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon, who are responsible for these massacres, have been elected prime minister.
There's no need to refute anything about Oslo because Lozowick does a perfectly good job of that himself. It says so in his book that Israel continued building settlements, and if anyone bothers to look into the realities of settlement building, it often leaves Palestinians homeless and landless, making the land that is supposed to become their state unviable. He runs through various refutations of Barak's 'generous' offers, dismissing them out of hand, and proceeds to put all the blame on Arafat as though he can somehow launch a campaign to destroy Israel from a territory he has no control over, is sliced up by checkpoints and settler-only roads and eventually a wall, and where most Palestinians can be imprisoned in their own villages at the discretion of somebody other than Arafat. Those who believe Arafat started the al-Aksa Intifada by snapping his fingers should remember he wasn't involved with the first, which ended largely because Palestinians expected a state after Oslo.
Almost forgot, he says Netanyahu turned over Hebron to the PA in October 1996, putting 90% of all Palestinians under PA rule, yet 20% of Hebron remained settled and occupied by soldiers, and Israel still controlled most of the West Bank territory, including travel and water.
No one argues against Israel's right to protect its people against terrorism. Thing is, it's been justifying the occupation this whole time with "security", yet the vast majority of suicide bombers are from the West Bank, the very area Israel has been holding onto for security. Israel's behavior in the occupied territories has brought the opposite of peace and security and continuing the same behavior will only bring more terrorism. To argue that a Palestinian state will be at war with Israel is not only playing on irrational fears, it's a non-sequitur. The Palestinian state, which was declared in 1988 to Israel's apathy, is fighting Israel now for its right to exist, a fight that will end when Israel, the strong side, gives them their right to self-determination. In the meantime this talk of 'removing illegal settlements' and 'unilateral withdrawal' is a waste of time.
P.S. Being Jewish, I find his statement, "Jews don't take revenge" offensive. As for the Jewish refugees from Arab states (which is a whole other discussion itself), Israel will have to make peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world before anything can be done about their exodus, part of which will require Israel respecting the right of return in principle and to a certain extent, in practice.
Rating: 
Summary: Just the Facts, Sir
Review: Yaakov Lozowick is an accomplished historian who is able to present the facts in a very clear and easy-to-follow manner. Given the amount of information that he had to summarize in order to make his point without writing a thousand-page history book, I'd say he did an excellent job. Lozowick essentially starts from the early days of Zionism (the late 1800s) and goes until a year or two into the so-called al-Aqsa Initifada, all along the way talking in more detail about Israel's wars and other significant events. That's about where my praise ends. Now for the dirty work... Throughout the book, Lozowick talks about "universal morality," a dubious concept which in this case translates into "the moral values of Yaakov Lozowick, which are usually similar to the values shared by most liberal, first-world countries in the year 2002." He brings almost no concrete principles, and even the ones that he does are influenced by his own political views. Case in point: Lozowick is careful to distinguish between "killing" and "murder," indeed an important distinction. So then why does David Ben Gurion gets praise for slaughtering the crew of the Altalena after they had waived a white flag and begged for a cease-fire? Anyone not blinded by narrow political views would call that murder in cold blood. But the biggest problem with "Right to Exist," the one that makes it difficult to read (especially at the end), is the conclusions that are drawn by this supposedly repentant peacenick. Don't be fooled: Yaakov Lozowick is still a hopeless peacenick who doesn't let the facts get in the way of his conclusions. It's almost funny the way the he can go on for pages and pages talking about Arab rejectionism and brutality and then suddenly express sincere hope that in the future Israel will reach some sort of utopian peace with its Arab neighbors. But by far the most outrageous conclusion is the "Lozowick Peace Plan." Like a good leftist, Lozowick hasn't learned a thing from the faliure of Oslo. He belives that the essential "land-for-peace" formula was right and that only the timing was off. So what's his solution? Wait 150-200 years (!!) until the Palestinians fully come to terms with the existence of the Jewish State, and then give them Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. Mr. Lozowick, do you take your readers for idiots?
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